Storm of Locusts

Chapter 17

We ride at full speed south across the open desert.

After half an hour, we hit a paved road and a sign pointing us to Lupton. The road is pockmarked by time and weather, but it’s better than the bare suggestion of a trail we’ve been on. Finally, the Wall comes into view.

The Tribal Council built the Wall. Protection from not just the natural disasters of the Big Water that rained down on the earth—the storms and earthquakes—but for all the man-made horrors too. The Energy Wars that gutted the Midwest, the fracking engines shaking the earth until she broke, the oil pumps bleeding her dry. But Dinétah was spared, safe behind the Wall.

And here I was about to leave willingly.

Clive’s voice comes through the speaker in my head. “Guardhouse on the left, coming up fast.”

“I see it,” I say, throttling down. I glance around the camp itself. “That’s strange.”

“What’s strange?” Ben says, her voice anxious in my ear. She hadn’t said anything the whole ride from Tse Bonito, but she stayed tight up against my back, her arms holding on to me like I was the last life preserver on a sinking ship.

Clive answers first. “There’s no one here.”

There’s a refugee camp here in Lupton, much like the one I remember from Rock Springs. Probably four dozen tents of various shapes and sizes, some nylon camping tents and some canvas, some just makeshift lean-tos held up by wooden poles. The tents spread out between the sparse piñon trees and brush along an open field in the shadow of the Wall. There’s a few more solid-looking buildings here and there. Something that looks like a meeting hall. Another building with a big red cross on the roof that marks it as a medical facility. A hogan for ceremony.

But just like Rock Springs, Lupton is empty. Back in Rock Springs it was because the people had fled the flesh-eating monsters and hid in smuggling tunnels. We never found them, but news came back that that’s where they’d been. The people had clearly left Lupton, too. But to where? Through the Wall into the Malpais? Somewhere else in Dinétah? And more important, why? What could have made them all abandon the hope of a new home?

A shiver runs down my back as I realize the most obvious answer. They followed the White Locust to whatever new home he promised them, swelling the numbers of the faithful, building his Swarm.

“Hand me my shotgun,” I mutter to Ben through the comm. Ben keeps one hand around my waist and pulls my shotgun free from the side rack with the other. We drive slowly through the ghost town, our engines the only noise. I maneuver around a metal tent pole that’s left abandoned in the road, like a windstorm had come through. Windstorms make me think of Kai. He could have done this, but why? He was so careful with his power, worried about hurting people. I can’t see him destroying a whole town even if it was within his ability. But if the White Locust made him? If somehow he has control of Kai and his powers?

“Gates are open,” Clive says. There, fifty feet in front of us, the road leads us to a gatehouse and, just past it, a massive gate. The gate is a heavy steel door set on a huge pulley system that would take at least three men to operate. I imagine it would close with crushing force if recklessly released. To get that door open and closed is no small task. But now the door is wide-open, listing dangerously off the single metal chain that it’s still attached to. Something, or someone powerful, ripped that door free from its hinges. Something with supernatural force. Someone with clan powers.

I swallow, uneasy. And then something above the gate catches my eye, and my unease turns to horror. Because high above the top of the gate, hammered into the turquoise rock itself, is a body.

“Up there,” I whisper. “Above the door.”

The body is slight, young. Too hard to tell the person’s gender so high up and half-hidden in the shadows of the Wall. They are nailed to the rock, their arms spread Christ-like, held by some sort of stakes through their shoulders that look like railroad spikes. The spikes hold all their weight, which isn’t much. But it’s enough to leave the legs hanging uselessly and their head lolling senselessly on a bent neck. It’s a terrible thing that’s been done, and my stomach threatens to bring back my hard-won lunch at the sight.

Then I realize who it is staked into the Wall, and my whole being shudders in revulsion.

“Oh God,” Clive moans, a strangled cry as he sees the same shock of red hair I do. Comes to the same inevitable conclusion.

“Caleb.”